Re: [mpls] draft-fang-mpls-label-forwarding-no-swap - how much does it really save?

[Robert Raszuk <[e-mail]>]

​Hi Eric,​


> ​​
> If you notice that the incoming label needs to be 'replaced' by an
> outgoing label of the same value, you could just make the rewrite string
> shorter, so it won't overwrite the top label on the stack.  This seems to
> be what the draft suggests, but it could be done as an optimization for the
> particular case where the incoming and outgoing labels have the same value.


​This is precisely ​the crux where your statement fails.

You use term "incoming label" and "outgoing lable" ... well in the new
architectures there is no such things.

It is a "global label" or "path label" with adjacency information.

So to support legacy hardware new control plane has to make up from single
label now two (identical) labels to pass it to data plane. Now also data
plane must be smart to check that and program its state per your
suggestion.

Why would we do that other then due to worry about legacy chipsets feared
to be non compliant to new RFC ?

Many thx,
R.